Last week’s conclusion of the record-breaking government shutdown was great news for federal employees in general. But for a few thousand specific feds, it was even better news. They’d been told they were about to lose their jobs completely, and as of Friday, almost all of them have now had those notices formally rescinded.
Filings the Justice Department submitted to a federal court in San Francisco on Friday indicate that each of the more than 3,000 federal workers who had received reduction in force (RIF) notices after the shutdown began have now been formally notified that those RIFs have been cancelled.
That action came as a result of several provisions in the continuing resolution Congress passed last week to reopen the government. The legislation provided that not only any RIF notice an agency issued on Oct. 1 or later “shall have no force or effect,” but it also barred federal agencies from using any funding to conduct any further RIFs for as long as the current CR is in effect.
Those same RIFs were the subject of a union lawsuit that had already resulted in a preliminary injunction putting the layoffs on hold. But the Trump administration argues the continuing resolution means there’s no longer a need to litigate over whether the RIFs were legal in the first place.
“In light of these developments, defendants believe this case is moot,” attorneys wrote in a filing Friday.
In all, agency-by-agency filings show the administration attempted to fire a total of 3,605 employees during the shutdown — with RIF notices ranging from more than 1,300 at the Internal Revenue Service to 54 at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
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Agencies updated their filings on Friday to indicate that they had complied with the directive Congress included in the CR to notify each employee that their RIF notices have been withdrawn.
However, there is some doubt as to the fate of 299 positions in the Department of Education’s civil rights division. Although the department notified those workers on Oct. 14 — a time period during which Congress undid all other RIF notices — the government argues that those specific notices were first issued in March, and consequently weren’t covered by the continuing resolution.
“Although the March 2025 RIF group of OCR employees is an entirely separate group from the 137 OCR employees to whom October 10 RIF notices were issued, and finalizing the March 2025 RIF does not involve issuing or implementing a RIF during and because of the shutdown, ED has paused separating the March RIF OCR employees pursuant to this court’s preliminary injunction pending clarification from the court that the current preliminary injunction does not encompass ED’s March 2025 RIF,” Jacqueline Clay, the department’s chief human capital officer wrote in a declaration.
The Army is taking the next step in its ambitions to start using small nuclear reactors to power critical infrastructure on at least some of its bases. This week, the service started the solicitation process for its Janus program via the Defense Innovation Unit, while also announcing some of the first bases that are most likely to host the new miniature nuclear generators.
Officials want to test the feasibility of using the microreactors to deal with what they say are several problems: frequent electrical outages, increasing power demands, and a limited menu of backup generation alternatives. The Army says it is convinced that the commercial technology behind the latest generation of reactors is viable — the big question is cost.
So this week, through the Defense Innovation Unit’s Commercial Solutions Opening, the Army released a solicitation asking vendors to propose microreactor designs that the service will use to test its resilience goals on nine separate bases between now and 2030.
“What resilience means to us is that we have power no matter what, 24/7, and right now, that resiliency is provided 100% by fossil fuels,” Dr. Jeff Waksman, the principal deputy assistant secretary of the Army for installations, energy and environment, told reporters at the recent Association of the U.S. Army conference in Washington. “With fossil fuels, you have a certain number of days of backup power, but that is a huge vulnerability, particularly if you start to look at like Arctic locations or Pacific locations. So the only technologies that we have now that could be possibly applied to Arctic or Pacific locations to provide 24/7 power for a long length of time is nuclear power. It’s the only option that we have right now.”
Cost considerations
Waksman said the Army is confident the commercial nuclear industry can support the service’s ambitions — and meet a Trump administration goal to have at least one Army-regulated nuclear reactor up and running on a domestic military base by 2028.
For now, the biggest question is cost. And for the time being, officials aren’t even sure exactly how to define the cost-effectiveness of a nuclear option.
“It’s a hard question, and it’s going to eventually be an Army senior leader discussion. And the question is, how much are we willing to pay for resiliency? That’s still an open question, and that’s going to be part of what we’re going to try to figure out here,” he said. “I don’t think we need to meet absolute parity with fossil fuels, but I think we’ve got to be reasonably close. But if you just go out to Hawaii or Alaska, they’re already paying upwards of 40 cents per kilowatt hour. So these reactors don’t need to be 10 or 12 cents a kilowatt hour to be parity. They need to be something like 40 or 50 cents a kilowatt hour. I think there’s going to be a big market for them. But exactly what the number is, that’s part of what we need to figure out for the next few years.”
Supply chain
But Waksman said there are other reasons for the Army to get involved now, beyond just determining the cost-effectiveness of commercial nuclear technologies.
He said the Army also wants to influence the development of the U.S. nuclear industry. And not necessarily with funding — there’s already plenty of that in private markets, with several companies having raised hundreds of millions of dollars to develop their reactor designs. He said the nuclear industry is already “very hot.”
“Now is the perfect time for the government to get involved, because there are multiple nuclear startups that have now gone public and have market caps of over a billion dollars. The problem is you have a dozen different companies with a dozen different supply chains, and there’s no way that that’s going to actually work — we’re going to have to neck this down,” he said. “For a comparison in aviation, Boeing and Airbus are vehement enemies, but they use a lot of the same supply chain, because having two fully parallel supply chains doesn’t make sense for airplanes. That’s part of the role that we’re going to play here, as these companies are developing their designs, is trying to help squeeze them into similar supply chains … that will not only give more options to these companies, but it also encourages these suppliers to actually expand and make assembly line components, because right now, nuclear reactor components tend to be one-off, custom, handmade components.”
As part of the partnership with DIU, the Army plans to use an iterative prototyping process, via other transaction agreements (OTAs), to test the reactor designs on nine bases, which were also announced this week. They are:
Fort Benning, Georgia
Fort Bragg, North Carolina
Fort Campbell, Kentucky
Fort Drum, New York
Fort Hood, Texas
Fort Wainwright, Alaska
Holston Army Ammunition Plant, Tennessee
Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington
Redstone Arsenal, Alabama
At each of those sites, the companies selected are expected to start by building a “first of a kind” reactor, then use lessons learned to improve on that commercial design with a “second of a kind.”
Making nuclear “sexy” again
Waksman said there’s a precedent for that kind of government involvement — both in terms of technology and in workforce development. The Army is trying to emulate the model NASA used to spur development of the space industry through its Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program.
“When NASA wanted to start commercial rocketry, they started at the COTS competition, and that was the competition that basically created SpaceX. SpaceX took an industry where the A students in engineering didn’t want to go into rockets, it wasn’t cool, and SpaceX made it cool again, and suddenly you had all the really smart engineers on campus wanted to get into space and rocketry,” he said. “Nuclear needs its SpaceX. There are these innovative, exciting startups, and we’re hoping to cultivate them in the same way that NASA cultivated SpaceX, make nuclear sexy again, and encourage more of the top young engineering talent to want to go in the field. Because right now, there’s a tremendous shortage.”
FILE - Reactors for Unit 3 and 4 sit at Georgia Power's Plant Vogtle nuclear power plant on Jan. 20, 2023, in Waynesboro, Ga., with the cooling towers of older Units 1 and 2 billowing steam in the background. Company officials announced Wednesday, May 24, 2023, that Unit 3 would reach full power in coming days, after years of delays and billions in cost overruns. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)
The Pentagon is restructuring the chain of command within its acquisition system, replacing the program executive offices that have long formed the backbone of the Defense Department procurement system with “portfolio acquisition executives” that will be more empowered to make decisions and more directly accountable for performance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Friday.
The changes are part of a wide-ranging overhaul Hegseth said the department will make as part of what he framed as a war on Pentagon bureaucracy amid a need to accelerate the procurement system, increase competition, use commercial technology as DoD’s default option, and eliminate excessive regulations.
“Speed to delivery is now our organizing principle,” Hegseth said Friday during a 70-minute speech at the National War College in Washington. “It is the decisive factor in maintaining deterrence and warfighting advantage. If our warfighters die or our country loses because we took too long to get them what we needed, we have failed. It is that simple. The sense of urgency has slipped too much, and when you look at what we face, we have to recapture it.”
Commonality with existing proposals
Much of what Hegseth unveiled Friday mirrors reform proposals that are making their way through Congress or that have been suggested by independent reform panels. The rollout also follows a pair of executive orders President Donald Trump issued in April, directing a reshaping of federal acquisition processes.
Hegseth offered few details on what DoD’s own conception of the new role would be, but said further guidance would be published within the next 180 days. One key theme, he said, would be empowering the new portfolio officials to make decisions without waiting for bureaucratic approval processes.
“We will break down monolithic systems and build a future where our technology adapts to the threat in real near time. Contracting officers will be embedded within program teams and accountable to program leaders, shoulder to shoulder with our engineers, operators and warfighters who can provide critical, real-world user feedback to the engineers,” he said. “If the mission is not successful, there will be real consequences. We will ensure accountability by extending PAEs’ tenure to be longer than the current PEO service times. We will leverage taxpayer dollars in a more accountable, flexible and deliberate manner to maximize their value across capability portfolios. We will shift funding within portfolios’ authorized boundaries swiftly and decisively to maximize mission outcomes. If one program is faltering, funding will be shifted within the portfolio to accelerate or scale a higher priority. If a new or more promising technology emerges, we will seize the opportunity and not be held back by artificial constraints and funding boundaries that take months or even years to overcome.”
Wartime Production Unit
Meanwhile, Hegseth said DoD is standing up a new organization called the “Wartime Production Unit.” It will be a successor to the existing Joint Production Acceleration Cell, but will be led by a “deal team” that the secretary said would be empowered to make its own agreements with vendors who conduct work across multiple portfolios.
“The deal team will reinforce our contracting workforce, enabling them to work with newly empowered PAEs to negotiate with vendors based on a broader perspective of the vendor’s total book of business within the department, rather than through the lens of a single program, creating leverage and incentives not previously applied,” he said. “This deal team will craft financial incentives that drive contractor performance, demanding on-time delivery of the weapons our warfighters desperately need. It’s about faster negotiations, better results and a commitment to complete transparency and cooperation between the government and our industry partners.”
That approach, Hegseth said, is not just a pilot program — and the department is actively looking to expand the unit and staff it with people who have expertise in the defense business.
“Many talented operators are already on board at the Pentagon, former industry executives who are serving our country to drive success. We call them Business Operators for National Defense, and I encourage those listening who are interested to reach out if you have the skills to contribute to the defense industrial renewal we are embarking on. This may seem like an obvious change, but it’s new for our department to empower world-class operators to help drive necessary change from the Pentagon to industry,” he said. “It’s a fundamental shift in how we arm our warfighters. We are committed to dominating the modern battlefield, and that domination starts with a wartime industrial base focused on execution and operational success.”
Industry’s role
Still to come, Hegseth said, is new guidance that will aim to incentivize contractors to build their own production capacity, let DoD offer clearer demand signals, and create more stable funding streams for multiyear contracts.
As part of that effort, he said, the department would need to ask Congress to alter some existing rules that constrain DoD’s ability to move money between accounts and programs, though he did not specify the exact types of flexibility the department would seek.
“This will build on the great work already done to improve the [planning, programming, budgeting and execution] process and how CAPE and the comptroller interact with Congress,” Hegseth said. “We commit to doing our part, but industry also needs to be willing to invest their own dollars to meet the long-term demand signals provided to them. Industry must use capital expenditures to upgrade facilities, upskill their workforce and expand capacity if they don’t, we are prepared to fully employ and leverage the many authorities provided to the president, which ensure that the department can secure from industry anything and everything that is required to fight and win our nation’s wars.”
And Hegseth warned that companies that aren’t ready to adapt themselves to the department’s vision for a speedier system with more “magazine depth” could soon find themselves with fewer contracts.
“For those who come along with us, this will be a great growth opportunity, and you will benefit,” he said. “To industry not willing to assume risk in order to work with the military, we may have to wish you well in your future endeavors, which would probably be outside the Pentagon. We’re going to make defense contracting competitive again, and those who are too comfortable with the status quo to compete are not going to be welcome.”
DAU is now WAU
But Hegseth said the changes he wants can only happen if DoD achieves a culture change within its own acquisition workforce.
He said he would begin that effort by overhauling the department’s Defense Acquisition University, including by renaming it the Warfighting Acquisition University. He said it would be the “launching pad” for the acquisition workforce and would try to instill in its members a “transformative and warrior mindset.”
“The patriotic men and women in this audience who architect, develop and procure the world’s most lethal and capable technology must be unleashed to deliver the arsenal of freedom faster than we ever have before,” Hegseth said. “The Warfighting Acquisition University will prioritize cohort-based programs combining experimental and project-based learning on real portfolio challenges, industry-government exchanges, and case method instruction that develops critical thinking. And rapid decision making — no more sitting in classrooms learning about failed processes of the past. Our acquisition system is only as good as our workforce.”
FILE - Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks during a ceremony at the Pentagon to commemorate the 24rd anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Sept. 11, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, File)
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